


Ivy, Unlimited

by psocoptera



Category: Jane Unlimited - Kristin Cashore
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, F/F, First Time, Vaguely Sports-ish Rom-Com, Western, background Kiran/Patrick, medical drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 12:44:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17001897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: If Jane's choices are like the ribs of an umbrella all branching from one point, Ivy's are more like a Scrabble board, where you can lay a new word down across any word already there.





	1. Epidemic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide Isis! I was so excited to match on this fandom and get to play in this multiverse. This was so much fun to get to write.
> 
> Many thanks to my betas Carpenter and Irilyth for all your help.
> 
> Content notes: illness, serious injury + blood, canonical past injury to an animal (although I've interpreted Jasper's brain injury as a recoverable concussion.)

1\. _Epidemic_

"We have to quarantine the island," Philip says.

Ivy blinks hard and tries to force her sleep-fogged brain into gear. It's four in the morning, the day before the gala, and Philip is supposed to be on his way to an undisclosed location with Leo Panzavecchia. But Ivy has messed it all up somehow. She had woken up from a weird dream where the baby was floating in the big fish tank, the one with the bull shark, and it had felt so menacing and so much like she actually heard him crying that she had gone up to the safe room in the west attics just to check, just to see for herself that he was okay before he left with Philip.

The baby had been screaming bloody murder, but wasn't in the fish tank, and that was good enough for Ivy. But before she could escape back to bed, Philip had thrust the kid at her, saying he just needed both hands to finish packing up, and she had happened to look down at the baby's rashy face and comment that, huh, some of his blisters were almost _blue_ , poor kid.

Philip had frozen and taken the baby back and shined a penlight into his (screaming) face and at the end of that he'd told Ivy that it was a good thing her low-light color vision was better than his, and by the way they had an emergency on their hands and needed to all convene immediately.

"We cannot possibly quarantine the island," Mrs. Vanders says now. "Certainly not because the baby's chicken pox has gotten worse."

"If my husband says it must be done - " Phoebe starts.

"It's not chicken pox," Philip says direly, interrupting her. "It's _frog_ pox. Sorry, dear."

There's a moment of silence. Cook, who has ended up with the baby, shifts him so he's holding him a little further away from his body.

"Nobody ever died of frog pox," Patrick observes.

" _People_ don't," Philip says. "But this case hasn't followed the normal course of frog pox at all. If it's a new strain - if it's adapted to survive outside the body - it could be environmentally devastating if it got into a freshwater ecosystem."

"Oh," Ivy says suddenly. "To the _frogs_."

"We can't abandon our real, urgent commitment to the Panzavecchias over an imaginary possibility," Mrs. Vanders is saying, but Ivy is thinking about frogs, and rain, and droughts, and global agriculture. That first chapter of _Grapes of Wrath_ , when the frogs stop singing, and when it finally rains a little and just a few frogs fall down into the dust.

"I'm sorry," Phoebe says. "But I'm not going to be the agent who oopsied an epidemic. No one is getting off this island until we're sure there's no risk of transmission, and if ESF can't handle that in-house then I will call in the resources that can."

"Of course that won't be necessary," Mrs. Vanders says, lifting her chin.

Ivy manages to wrangle herself into hanging-up-plastic-sheeting duty - something something isolation zones. It's not as good as Patrick's job, turning boats back from the dock, but it beats making phone calls about the gala being postponed, or whatever it is that Mrs. Vanders has gone to investigate in the island's septic system.

The quarantine is such a disaster for the Panzavecchia family that Ivy is trying not to think about how it's also a setback for her personally. Depending on what Geneva thinks of what Mrs. Vanders told them about the situation, Ivy's exit date could be moved back weeks, months, or possibly even years. Given how hostile Mrs. Vanders has been since Ivy asked to leave ESF, Ivy can only assume her explanation blamed Ivy somehow. It's not like Ivy has a start date for the next phase of her life that she's going to miss - no first day of classes lined up - but she's so more than ready to get off this island.

She's hanging plastic sheeting over the east wing entrance on the third floor when Jane emerges from the Red Suite, probably looking for breakfast. Jane is wearing a loudly orange shirt - _persimmon_ , Ivy thinks, or maybe _flame_ , she likes color words - and black-and-white striped jeans. The stripes move in a mesmerizing way on Jane's legs as she walks, or maybe it's just the angle Ivy's looking from, kneeling down on the floor tacking down a corner of the plastic.

"What on earth is all this," Jane says, taking in the sheeting-swathed center of the house, and Ivy's surgical mask. "It looks like the end of E.T.A. out here. Is this for the gala?"

Ivy has never actually seen _E.T.A. the Extra-Terrestrial Amphibian_ \- they did a lot more reading than watching, growing up on the island - but she thinks she can picture what Jane means from cultural osmosis anyways, a house wrapped up in tarps and tubes and faceless men in hazmat suits all over.

"The gala is postponed," Ivy says. "Octavian and Cook are sick with something awful. There are masks in the banquet hall for everybody."

It's the cover story the Vanders concocted. Cook is minding the kids, and Octavian is actually sleeping off a sedative dose, which Philip had objected to but Mr. Vanders said he honestly needed anyways. It's not entirely clear to Ivy what's going to happen when he wakes up. Probably Mrs. Vanders has a plan.

"Oh no!" Jane says. "I saw Octavian earlier this morning talking to Ravi, and he looked fine."

"I guess it came on suddenly," Ivy says, trying to sound the right amount of concerned for Octavian but not concerned about Jane apparently having been up and lurking around the house earlier without anyone spotting her.

Ivy doesn't want to have to be suspicious of Jane. Jane seems so wonderfully _apart_ from everyone Ivy is used to: not part of the money crowd, the art crowd, the international crowd, the criminal crowd, everyone Ivy is tired of dealing with. Patrick has warned her to be careful about thinking of Jane as naive and harmless - his exact phrase had been "an innocent baby fawn", which he thought nobody raised by Magnolia was likely to be. Ivy doesn't think she thinks Jane is an innocent baby, but she could be an elk, or something, if girl elks could have the antlers to match Jane's magnificent hair. Something solid and sincere and undisguisable. But then, Magnolia had seemed to have that quality too.

"Can I help you?" Jane asks. She gestures at the sheeting. She's been craning her head to look around the courtyard, at the draped-off balconies and the blurred spots of the nasturtiums behind the plastic. "This seems unexpectedly relevant to my interests."

Ivy supposes that to an umbrella enthusiast, it must look like she's dressing the house in hundreds of cheap rain ponchos, like a pluvial fashion disaster.

"I don't want to keep you from breakfast," Ivy says.

"I'll find you afterwards," Jane offers. All Ivy needs is for Jane to notice that most of the plastic sheeting isn't actually doing much, barrier-wise, and start wondering what it _is_ doing. But she can't bring herself to turn her down.

(The plastic sheeting is selling Kiran and Ravi on the legitimacy of the emergency, not that either of them had seemed to mind postponing the gala very much. And it's muddling the question of which part of the house Philip is actually trying to keep isolated.)

*

"You can leave this meeting immediately if you're just going to relish this catastrophe," Mrs. Vanders snaps at Ivy. Ivy has been standing motionless and silent since she walked into the room; if her face is doing anything, it can't be anything very - oh. Except she had thought of Jane, just then. She had probably smiled.

Ivy nods minutely.

"As I was saying," Mrs. Vanders sniffs. "We have a frog pox team coming over from Portugal with a full outbreak field testing kit. They get here this evening. Unfortunately Octavian is likely to wake up before then, and he's going to know that _he's_ not seriously ill, and he's going to want to know why we called in strangers rather than the family doctor. We need to escalate the cover-up."

"We could poison Colin," Patrick says. "He's being even more of a dick than usual."

Mrs. Vanders smiles. "He's convinced he's about to get Norwalk, or possibly Legionnaire's disease, of course he's cranky."

"Is that why he was yelling about the courtyard fountain, he thinks there's Legionnaire's in the water system?" Patrick says. "Nice touch."

"Thank you," Mrs. Vanders says. "But, no, I think we need a stooge rather than a dupe." She smiles again. It isn't nice. "Ivy. You're about to get very sick. Ravi will probably insist on seeing you - make it convincing."

Ivy nods again. She's tempted to sigh, but Mrs. Vanders would probably go ballistic.

"I'm going to bring in Kiran, too," Mrs. Vanders says. "It will take 48 hours for the frog pox team to get results, and I don't think we can manage Octavian that long without a Thrash in the game."

"Hell of a time to do it," Patrick says, but his face is all fierce and eager and hopeful, all at once. Mrs. Vanders doesn't so much as frown at him. Hmph.

*

Ivy is installed in her room, sweaty (from cardio), eyes red (from an onion), and generally haggard (a little carefully mis-applied makeup). She arranges a wastebasket and water bottle and turns off the lights and climbs into bed just in time for a knock on the door, which turns out to be Ravi, as expected, but also Jane.

"Mrs. Vanders said you had gotten it," Ravi says, hovering in the doorway. "You're supposed to be immune to these things, Ivy-bean."

"Sorry," Ivy croaks, trying to sound sick and small. She _feels_ sick and small - Ravi sounds genuinely worried, and Ivy hates lying to him and scaring him like this.

"Do you want company?" Jane asks from behind him. "I could read to you." Her eyes look big and liquid above her surgical mask. Ivy would very much like to be read to by Jane's warm voice and baby-deer eyes, but it would just be more lying. Probably nobody has even told Jane yet about Magnolia. If Mrs. Vanders wasn't so angry with Ivy, Ivy could have suggested bringing Jane in along with Kiran.

"I think I'm just going to try to sleep," Ivy says. "And you should probably stay away since we're still not sure how it's spreading. Philip's going to have some colleagues come and check things, he said."

"I really don't think the house has Legionnaire's disease," Ravi says, rolling his eyes.

"It has _something_ ," Jane says. "I keep hearing crying."

"Yipping?" Ravi asks.

"Probably the wind," Ivy says at the same time. Ravi winks at her. He clearly thinks she was trying to help him cover up his mother's velociraptors and not the missing baby. Ivy does not consider it her job to deal with the velociraptors in any way. She wishes she could say the same about the baby.

"I'm just going to try to sleep," she says again, and they both apologize and back out and close the door. Jane gives her a little wave, the kind that, if they were standing close together, might have been a little touch.

If Jane knew Ivy was faking it, they could touch. They could take off the masks when they were alone - although, Ivy remembers, there is the real issue of the frog pox, to which Ivy has definitely been exposed. Maybe they could touch if they wore gloves.

Ivy has been up since 3:30, or something like that; she thinks she might actually sleep, as long as she's here in her bed. She drifts off thinking of touching Jane through a hanging curtain of plastic, only Jane's face is too blurred for Ivy to tell what she's thinking.

*

Ivy doesn't see Jane for the rest of the day. Patrick comes by with a tray of toast and tea and applesauce - plausible invalid food - and cheese sandwiches and chocolate bars hidden in his pockets. He's practically radiating satisfaction and Ivy can only assume that things have gone well with the whole Kiran thing. Ivy doesn't really want to hear about it while she's stuck alone in her room. The frog pox doctors - Portuguese, middle-aged, and humorless - arrive and take Ivy's blood and swab her throat and inspect her skin for frog pox in two different colors of light. Mrs. Vanders catches Ivy at her computer desk and yells at her for being out of bed and breaking cover and then yells at her for not having a report done yet about what people are saying about them postponing the gala, which was what Ivy had been trying to do at her desk.

She works on the report on one of her laptops, and then does some sit-ups and push-ups, trying to burn off some energy. Being told not to leave her room is making her twitchy. She'd like to swim, or to be out rowing, no walls, just wind and sun and ocean, although this time of year it's more like wind and rain and waves trying to swamp you. Still, she'd like to take Jane out in the rowboat, and watch her run her hands along the gunwales, and see what her hair would do in the wind. She pictures Jane holding an enormous umbrella over both of them, maybe something bright orange like a life jacket.

Ivy works on the report some more, and sleeps for awhile, and wakes up and finishes it. It's almost 10 in the morning and there's no sign of Patrick with breakfast. Ivy is starving and cranky and wondering if this is some kind of loyalty test from Mrs. Vanders - will Ivy have enough discipline to stay in her room, or will hunger break her cover. Finally there's a knock on the door and Ivy practically yanks it off its hinges, only it's Jane, not Patrick, oops.

"I'm... feeling better," Ivy says, trying to sound casual. Jane just sighs, hands her a banana and a plate of toast, and brushes past her to sit down on Ivy's bed.

"Um," Ivy says, confused, but also tearing into the top piece of toast.

"It's been a busy night," Jane says. "Let's see. Lucy thought she was dying and confessed to Ravi that she and Colin are art thieves, only Philip says it was just a panic attack. I mean, it was a panic attack that she had gotten sick; the art thief part is real, I guess. Also Octavian says that whoever put up the plastic sheeting that sealed off the library saved his life, and then he had some kind of fit and went in there and pulled half the books off the shelves until Kiran and Patrick stopped him. Kiran says she's going to hire someone to put it all back into alphabetical and Library of Congress order like God intended, and Lucy started working on it, I think as a sort of apology. And I got tired of hearing the crying baby and went and found him, and it turns out you and Patrick and the Vanders family and now Kiran are all spies harboring the missing Panzavecchia kids, and also my Aunt Magnolia was a spy, and you're not sick at all, unless you're going to catch the baby's frog pox."

"Oh, boy," Ivy says. "How are you feeling about all that?"

"Well, I don't think Library of Congress classification was divinely inspired," Jane says. She smiles tiredly up at Ivy. "It's a lot and I'm still thinking about it. I wanted to come see you."

"I can't believe nobody told me all this was happening," Ivy says, coming over to sit on her bed next to Jane. "Art thieves? Really?"

"I'm telling you now," Jane says. She scoots a little closer to Ivy. "I think Mrs. Vanders is mad at you. She told me not to disturb you but then Patrick said to ignore her. And, yeah. They were going to steal the Vermeer. Ravi is really upset. But also proud of Lucy for telling him."

"Was that a dig?" Ivy asks. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

"Oh," Jane says. "No." She looks down at her hands. "I'm not mad at you," she says. "Maybe at my Aunt Magnolia. Actually I meant to bring you something, and then I went to the kitchen because Patrick said you hadn't had breakfast, and I had my hands full and I forgot. Can I go grab something? I'll be right back."

"Okay," Ivy says, not sure what to make of this. Jane bounces up and clomps off. Ivy figures she might as well finish the toast while she's waiting, and then Jane's still not back, so she starts on the banana.

When Jane comes back, she has her surgical mask back on, and she's carrying a closed umbrella.

"I started making this yesterday, when I couldn't find you to help you with sealing up the house," Jane says. "At first I was thinking of making an extra-long bubble umbrella, clear, you know, meant to come all the way down to your shoulders, so it would feel like an isolation chamber. But I only have a little clear vinyl, enough for doing little windows and cutouts, and the plastic sheeting you were hanging up isn't clear enough. And then you were sick, and I tried to think of something comforting, and I came up with this."

She opens the umbrella. It's ombre, a pale winter-sky blue in the center, shading down to a deep evening blue around the bottom edge, and there's a path of blotchy, bleached-away white spiraling down from the tip to the edge like lines of clouds in the sky. Or maybe it's like foam, and the blues are the blues of the ocean.

Jane holds it up, so Ivy can see how the light comes through the colors, and then flips out two strange extra struts from the middle of the rod, so that they make a tripod with the umbrella at an angle.

"It's a bed umbrella, so you could have a little bit of the outside when you were stuck inside," Jane says. "The tripod was so you didn't have to hold it up." She makes as though to set it down on the bed.

"Wait," Ivy says, and ducks under the umbrella with Jane. She wraps her hand around Jane's so she can't set it down. "It's beautiful."

"But you weren't actually sick," Jane says.

"I might have frog pox," Ivy says. She looks at Jane. They're standing very close, together under the umbrella, and Jane seems pleased about it, happy to have Ivy holding her hand. Ivy doesn't think she's imagining the invitation in her eyes.

"I probably shouldn't kiss you," Ivy says. "Because of the possible frog pox."

"I don't mind," Jane says quickly, clarifying the invitation. "We can be in quarantine together." She waits, expectantly.

"You're still wearing your mask," Ivy says, grinning.

"Oh!" Jane says. "I put it back on in the hall in case I ran into anybody."

She slips it off with her free hand, and then Ivy is leaning down and Jane is leaning up, noses brushing, lips connecting. Ivy's hand tightens on Jane's. They are the island under the umbrella sea, and they don't mind being cut off from the rest of the world.


	2. Showdown

2\. _Showdown_

"Ivy," someone is saying. "Ivy, you can lift your hands away, I'm ready."

She's pressing. She has to keep pressing.

"Ivy," Ravi says in her ear. She can feel hands on her shoulders. "Ivy, you did good, but we're going to let the people work now, right? We have a medevac on the way, we have a stretcher, they're going to get him up to the lawn where the helicopter can land. Phoebe's going to keep her hands on him the whole way."

She has to keep pressing.

"Okay, Ivy-bean, we're going to let go now," Ravi says. Hands wrap around her wrists and lift her hands.

"No!" Ivy says, and tries to fight - she has to keep her hands on Patrick - but someone else's hands are there, in blue gloves, doing something with gauze, and the arms around her are dragging her back and away.

"He's going to be okay," Ravi is saying in her ear. "He's going to be okay. He's going to one of the best trauma centers in the world."

"He got shot," Ivy moans, but she lets Ravi pick her up from the wet sand, and they stand there watching while Phoebe and Cook and an FBI agent and Ji-hoon From The CIA get Patrick onto a stretcher and moving up the hill. Phoebe's hands stay on him the whole way, pressing and packing.

It occurs to Ivy that she's shaking.

"Okay," Ravi says. "I think next we need blankets and hot liquids."

"The _kids_ ," Ivy says. She looks around frantically, but they're the last people on the beach.

"I don't know why the missing Panzavecchia kids were at my gala," Ravi says, "But I don't need to know right now. They're safe with the FBI. We're going to get you straightened up a little and then we're going to get you on a fast boat to the city and we can figure out everything else later. I just need you to walk up this hill for me, okay? I know I used to piggy-back you but I'd probably break an ankle in the dark."

Slowly, Ravi urging her along and babbling at her steadily, Ivy starts trudging up the hill. It feels enormous, like trying to climb a mountain. The lawn, when they get there, looks miles wide. There's a helicopter there just starting to take off. Gala guests are lined up along the edge of the gardens, watching wide-eyed.

"See?" Ravi says. "There he goes. I always assumed it would be Octavian on one of those. We paid them for a practice run, you might recall."

Ivy might? Things have probably happened before tonight.

Mr. Vanders meets them halfway across the lawn with a blanket and a cup of cocoa. Ivy stops and takes a sip right there, Ravi holding the blanket closed around her shoulders.

"Jane," Ivy whispers, when the cocoa starts warming the numb center of her. "I want Jane." Jane is good at breathing, and Ivy needs to keep breathing.

"I'll find you Jane," Ravi says, and runs off towards the house, but when he meets them again, in the crocuses by the door into the gardens, he's shaking his head.

"Can't find her," he says.

Even in all the monstrous wrongness of the evening, that feels wrong to Ivy, and the light of the house suddenly seems dimmer.

"I'm sorry," Ravi says hoarsely, the first thing he's said that hasn't been smooth and gentle, and she knows he doesn't just mean for not finding Jane.

*

The house continues to look wrong.

It's like it's been washed with sepia, like an old photograph. Ivy blinks, like maybe she got cocoa in her eyes. The blood on her hands looks brown, even though Ivy is pretty sure it's red. Kiran starts screaming when she sees it. Mrs. Vanders hustles them both upstairs, curious gala guests staring at them, and into the master bedroom's enormous multi-jet shower.

Kiran stops screaming when Mrs. Vanders turns on the water. Mrs. Vanders cleans Ivy's hands in silence, which Ivy recognizes as an olive branch. No blame tonight. They both let her wrangle them out of their ruined dresses and into giant fluffy bathrobes.

"I want Jane," Ivy says. Kiran shakes her head.

"She may have left with someone," Mrs. Vanders says. "People started leaving as soon as Ravi ran in yelling. The circumspect versus the curious."

"She wouldn't just leave," Kiran says. "She didn't know anybody. Where would she even go. All her stuff is here."

Ivy imagines Jane on a horse, riding away alone across an endless prairie, an umbrella across her lap like a rifle. But that's not right.

Jane had hugged Ivy with her whole body. Ivy had told her she would come check on her later. If she had checked on Jane, maybe Jane would still be here, and maybe Jane would hug her again and she would be warm.

"I have a boat who will take you and a car waiting at the dock," Ravi says, rushing in. He blinks at Kiran and Ivy sitting there in their bathrobes. "You need to get dressed," he says.

"Ravi," Mrs. Vanders says, and Ivy knows she's going to argue, and it's going to be something about the FBI or the CIA or the many other things that are less important than Patrick.

"Yes," Ivy says, standing up and hauling on Kiran's arm. "We'll get dressed." She marches them out the door towards Kiran's room, and then realizes that while she could certainly find clothes of Kiran's to steal for herself, she doesn't want to wear Kiran's underwear.

"I have to go to my room," she says. She would probably run into fewer guests if she went up the nearer stairs and then around the courtyard to the west wing, but instead she goes out and runs her hand along the whole long wall that the second story of the library is behind. It's prickly, somehow, and her vision goes even browner. There are people on all of the balconies and they all look askance at her as she passes. Now she's the outlaw, riding through a narrow-eyed town. No.

She climbs the west courtyard stairs, and then back around the courtyard instead of towards her room. Has anyone looked for Jane in Jane's room? Maybe Jane is there. Maybe she decided to make a new umbrella instead of attending the gala. That's a pretty solid priority in Ivy's opinion. She runs down the hall, clutching the bathrobe so she doesn't trip, and bangs on Jane's door.

The only answer is a muffled mournful howling.

"Jasper?" Ivy says, throwing open the door. She doesn't see him. In the bed? Under the bed? Under the million umbrellas in the morning room? Finally Ivy opens the closet and the basset hound staggers out squinting, feet crossing over each other.

"Oh my god, Jasper, did you get drunk at the gala?" Ivy says. "What were you doing in Janie's closet? Where's Janie, Jasper?"

She isn't really asking, in the sense of expecting Jasper to answer, but he barks at her once, shakes himself and then takes off for the door to the suite, still stumbling and lurching.

Ivy grabs an umbrella from the closed ones standing against the wall. She thinks she'll feel better with something in her hands. She follows the dog.

Jasper runs down the hall. He's carrying his head low. Ivy is worried he's sick or hurt. It feels easier to worry about the dog than about Jane or Patrick. The dog is at least right here.

Jasper lumbers down the courtyard stairs, down and down and down. He seems to know where he's going. They hit the courtyard floor at last and he darts around guests, through the courtyard garden and back through the arches towards the library. Ivy is a faster runner but she can't squeeze around people's ankles. She's in time to see him run under the velvet rope.

Ivy steps over it. Jasper runs into Octavian's corner, jumps up onto the divan, and starts digging frantically in the blankets and books.

Ivy sighs. Following him down the stairs, she had thought the dog might actually take her to Jane. "I don't think Jane is in there, buddy."

Jasper whines, jumps down from the divan, sits down, lifts his head, and howls.

Ivy feels it. Maybe she should howl too. But there's a book on the divan behind Jasper that looks familiar, even in the murky light. _Winnie-the-Pooh_. Ivy picks it up.

"Jane had this," she says. It feels cold and prickly in her hand.

Jasper howls again. Even in some wide open desert, Ivy doesn't think she could mistake him for a lonesome coyote, but she imagines she can feel the wind, and she looks up like she might see a moon up there anyways.

Jane is on the library ceiling. At the end of one of Charlotte's weird lines of symbols, there's a painting of Jane, clear and realistic. It's like the sound of a low bell, or a high note on an ocarina, or a gunshot: Ivy knows that really is Jane up there somehow.

Ivy stares.

"Ivy, what are you doing," Kiran says behind her. "The boat is ready to go."

Ivy turns. Kiran is standing in the entrance to the library, fully dressed.

"We have to go to Patrick," Kiran says.

Ivy shakes her head.

"We have to save Jane," she says.

Jasper barks, and puts his front paws up on her leg.

"I don't know how," Ivy says.

Kiran stares at them. She rubs her ears and blinks.

"Charlotte," she says. She wobbles over to the nearest chair and sits down heavily.

"I don't know what to do here," Ivy says. "I'm good at computers. And lists."

Jasper makes a weird grunting noise, almost a sigh, and barks once. He noses Ivy's leg and trots out of the library.

Ivy tries to remember when Charlotte was painting the ceiling. She'd had scaffolding in the library. Before or after she reorganized the shelves? If Ivy could reach Jane, could she pull her out somehow?

She puts down _Winnie-the-Pooh_ and sits down next to Kiran, umbrella across her lap like she's keeping watch on a porch with a rifle.

Time feels like it might be slowing down, or speeding up. A few gala guests look in at them curiously.

"Ivy," Ravi says, from the library entrance. "Kiran! What's going on?"

Ivy points up wordlessly. She can see how the sight of Jane takes Ravi, like a stain washing down from his upturned face, leaching away color.

"Oh fuck," Ravi says, and sits down with them.

They're all slowing down. Ivy keeps breathing - she has to keep breathing for Jane - but she was so tired, already, and everything is so cold, and so dim.

*

There's a scream from out in the courtyard. Multiple screams - there are gala guests screaming.

Ivy and Ravi look at each other. Ivy grits her teeth and levers herself to her feet. She can see Ravi doing the same thing. They take hands and limp over to the entrance of the library.

There's a woman walking through the courtyard, weathered and determined. She's wearing a long purple coat, black boots, and a brimmed hat. The gala guests seem insubstantial in comparison; they blow out of her path like tumbleweeds.

"She stepped out of the painting!" someone screams. "Like the girl from The Ring! We're all gonna die!"

Ivy sees Jasper running at the woman's heels, and she isn't scared. She looks the woman in the face, and recognizes Jane's supposedly dead aunt Magnolia.

Magnolia walks through the arches, right up to the velvet rope.

"My friend here relays a message that my niece is dying," Magnolia says grimly.

*

The library is dim, but Magnolia seems bright, like some noonday sun shines just on her. She looks up at the ceiling with her hands on her hips, where Ivy is pointing to Jane.

"That's a reconciliation gone wrong," she says, shaking her head. "This house is sick. I never understood, when I was here before. But now that I've been in Zorsted longer, it seems obvious."

"Can you get her back?" Ravi asks.

"I think we can," Magnolia says, looking at Ivy. "But the whole thing is going to come down when we pull her out."

"The library?" Ravi says, alarmed. "The house?"

"Not the house, physically," Magnolia says. "But what we can see is like a mountain with a mine in it. Collapse the mine, mountain's still there."

"The letters," Ivy says, "But not the word." She knows every inch of the house, the blueprints, the catalog of the art, the places they played. She can feel the new thing Charlotte tried to do to the house, and she doesn't care about it. Take it away, the letters will still all be there, to rearrange however they want.

Ravi looks back and forth between them. "You're both witches," he says, "But I trust you."

Jasper yips.

"I'm afraid you're forgetting one thing," Octavian says softly, behind them. "This is my house, and I'm going to need you to go if you can't respect that."

They turn.

Octavian is standing there in a bathrobe, on the other side of the velvet rope. There's a gun thrust into the belt of the bathrobe. His eyes are dark and haunted.

Ivy thinks she hears castanets.

Magnolia draws in a breath.

"Your house has my niece," she says.

"She came here of her own free will," Octavian says. "And now you want to kill my wife in revenge?"

Magnolia frowns.

Ivy hasn't had time to explain. Magnolia doesn't know about Charlotte, how she figures into this. There's an empty corridor of air between Magnolia and Octavian and it throbs with words that terrify Ivy - standoff, showdown, shootout, gunfight. There's been too much bleeding tonight already.

"You don't have the right to be here," Octavian says, taking a step forward, so that his thighs press into the velvet rope. "You weren't invited. Get out of my library, and I'll let you walk away."

Magnolia stands there, square and planted on the library rug, and doesn't move.

"She does," Kiran says weakly.

Ivy had almost forgotten about her, slumped in her chair while the rest of them looked at the ceiling. But now Kiran stands up and walks slowly to stand behind Magnolia.

"This is my house too," Kiran says. "Jane is my guest, and so is Magnolia."

"That's right," Ravi says, falling in next to her. "I welcomed Charlotte but this is a perversion of what our house should be."

Jasper trots in between Kiran and Ravi, and now Magnolia has a whole posse behind her.

But Octavian has the gun, and he's not stepping back.

Ivy looks back and forth between Octavian and Magnolia, her employer and a near-stranger, a sweating man and a steel-eyed woman.

She steps forward and hands Magnolia the umbrella she took from Jane's room. She doesn't know why she's been holding on to it, but she suddenly knows it's the missing piece.

Octavian puts his hand on the gun in his belt.

Magnolia raises the umbrella, still closed, to point at him.

Octavian pulls the gun from his belt, and Magnolia slides the runner on the umbrella, fast, opening it with a pop.

The umbrella is made from what Ivy recognizes as a cheap children's fabric, scattered with a rainbow of cartoony frogs wearing little rain boots. When the umbrella pops open, it's like a pulse blows out from it, all through the library, blowing away the sepia and the dark. Everything is brighter, and all the colors look right again. Octavian falls down on the floor.

"Dad!" Kiran says, and rushes towards him with Ravi. Ivy looks at Magnolia.

"I remember this one," Magnolia says, turning the umbrella in her hands. "This was an early one. I always liked this one."

"Jane," Ivy says. She looks up. Jane is still on the ceiling, but the symbols around her, or figures, or whatever they are, are starting to move, twisting and writhing in strange, nauseating ways. There's a rustling, clattering noise, and Ivy looks around: the books have started shaking on the shelves. The temperature in the library is dropping rapidly. Ivy breathes and sees her breath.

Magnolia smiles. "Do you think you scare me?" she says to the ceiling, conversationally. "I've been in dark that's eaten a hundred men, cold and crushing and completely inhuman. You're a library." She looks at Ivy. "Do it now."

 _Do what_ , Ivy wants to ask, except she knows. She closes her eyes, reaches both hands up, and pulls.

Jane is stuck and doesn't want to come loose, but Ivy pulls, and then she can feel Jane's hands holding onto hers, helping to pull, and something behind Jane is cemented so tightly, but they keep pulling, forcing it loose, and then Ivy is falling back into an armchair with Jane in her arms, and something else is falling to the floor behind them with a thump.

"Ivy," Jane says, laughing and crying. "Ivy, you saved me. Ow, ow."

Jane is naked and her skin looks raw and dry and sunburnt. Ivy is suddenly very aware that she's naked under her bathrobe, which has come open so that some of Jane's skin is right on Ivy's where Jane sits in her lap. Ivy puts her arms around Jane to cover her, so she isn't just exposed to the world, and Jasper comes over and starts licking Jane's leg.

"I had help," Ivy says, not sure how to explain, and Jane turns enough to see her aunt Magnolia standing there looking down at them.

"Wait," Jane says. "Did I die? Is this..." She looks back at Ivy. "Did Charlotte get you too?"

Magnolia kneels down next to them.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm so sorry. I had to hide, but I wanted you to find me. I'm not dead. I came back for you."

"Aunt Magnolia," Jane says, starting to cry in earnest. Ivy keeps her arms around her, holding on.

"Charlotte is dead," Ravi says, behind them.

Ivy twists her head to look, and can just barely see legs, long and discolored on the floor.

*

Eventually, they sit in a room in the hospital, Ivy and Kiran and Ravi and Jane and Magnolia. Jane has an IV because she's dehydrated and lotion soothing her skin. In another room of the hospital, Patrick is stable and intubated. The doctors think his prognosis is good. Elsewhere, Octavian is sleeping with a heart monitor and an EEG, both stable. Down on the very lowest level, there is a drawer for what was left of Charlotte.

Jasper is in somewhere called Zorsted, which Ivy is having a hard time thinking about.

The room they're sitting in has two couches and a very bland and ugly painting of tadpoles on one of the walls. Ivy holds Jane's hand on the side that doesn't have the IV.

"It's not fair," Ivy says quietly.

Jane squeezes her hand questioningly.

"If Patrick dies, he'll really be dead," Ivy says. "And my parents - everybody wishes the people they lost could just secretly be somewhere else, where they could come back."

Magnolia, on the other side of Jane, looks away from them.

"Patrick's going to be okay," Jane says. "And I'm glad you saved me, even if it doesn't seem fair." She squeezes Ivy's hand again. "I'm sorry about your parents."

Ivy breathes, surviving.


	3. Opponent

3\. _Opponent_

Coming home from Geneva, Ivy gets stuck in an economy-class middle seat between a man with too many elbows and a woman who wants to talk about crystals. _The glamorous life of a secret agent_ , she says to herself, only not out loud, because that would give away the secret, and also it's incorrect because she isn't a secret agent any more. When she lands at JFK she takes a Lyft to the Thrash dock where Patrick is waiting and then it turns out they have to sit there waiting together because Kiran came over to shop and is somewhere in Manhattan buying thousand-dollar handkerchiefs or something. Ivy wants to complain about having to go to Geneva for the privilege of sitting in a series of windowless rooms - she'd only seen the damn _lake_ out the airplane window - and maybe about the ridiculousness of their employers (both sets), but Patrick has a bite mark showing through his tan on his neck and a generally abstracted demeanor and after the third conversational ball he drops Ivy concludes that too many tabs are already open and some of them are playing porn.

Ivy has never had that experience. She has had _sex_ , yes, but not space-out-afterwards-reminiscing sex. More like well-I-can-check-that-off sex. Ivy likes lists and trying new things and that had seemed like as good a reason as any to go for it, but maybe not.

Various packages show up at the dock over the course of the afternoon - Kiran is obviously not going to carry her own shopping bags when she can just have things sent over. It's been a long day for Ivy already, with the time difference and the nine hour flight, and she's more than ready to be home. She mentally plots Kiran's likely path, based on the locations of the stores whose logos are on the packages, although of course the packages may not be arriving in purchase order, and also Kiran has no particular reason to be path-efficient and could backtrack at any point. When Kiran finally returns in person, the afternoon light is already golden and slanted, and by the time they're out to the island the sky is full of sunset colors. Kiran passes the ride on deck with Patrick, and so it's just Ivy in the yacht's lounge, dozing off and trying to shake herself awake to get herself back on New York time. Mr. Vanders meets Kiran at the dock with the Rolls, while Ivy waits to go up with Patrick and her backpack and Kiran's purchases. They go into the house through the freight elevator entrance, so Ivy exploits the elevator and heads right up to her room. She should probably unpack but she flops onto her bed with a sigh.

She's technically on leave until the next morning, but Mrs. Vanders would surely like it if she came down to help with dinner, so after a little more flopping she hauls herself back off of the bed and into a shirt that hasn't been on an airplane all day. She walks down the back stairs rather than take the elevator - gotta conserve that diesel - and emerges into the kitchen to find, much to her surprise, Kiran and Ravi and Jane all sitting at the kitchen table with Cook and Mr. and Mrs. Vanders and Melissa who does most of the cleaning and Michael who does the floors and windows and Jorge who does the grounds and Chanthavy who does the fish tanks and Catalina who does the laundry. Patrick is stirring a large pot on the stove and looks a bit self-conscious.

"Ivy!" Jane says, standing up and abandoning a salad to come hug her. Ivy feels a little awkward being hugged by a guest while most of the permanent staff watches with interest, but this is Jane, who is the best thing Ivy has seen since the last time she saw Jane the night of the gala and told her about ESF. Jane is wearing a fuchsia shirt and yellow pants, which Ivy is pretty sure are the colors of some kind of tropical fish, and a smile so welcoming that Ivy would like to just stay there in Jane's arms.

She lets Jane let go of her, though, and follows Mrs. Vanders' crisp directions to the various parts of dinner stationed around the kitchen.

"After my dad left for his recuperative trip to Fiji, we got lonely in the banquet hall," Ravi announces. He must be able to see her confusion over the new dining arrangements. Small numbers for meals are historically one of the things the breakfast nook gets used for, but Ivy suspects that the Kiran-Patrick situation has muddled the traditional staff-family divide.

Ivy sits down at the end of the table where there's a free seat. She glances down the table at Jane, even though it would be awkward to talk with Michael and Catalina between them, and sees Ravi's hand on Jane's arm.

Inside, Ivy winces a little. It only makes sense that with Lucy out of the picture, Kiran wrapped up in Patrick, and the house so empty otherwise, that Ravi would be spending a lot of time with Jane. She had seen him kiss her, although Jane had pushed him away. Ivy had thought maybe he'd moved on to a new interest - she'd seen him at the gala hand-feeding a young man a canapé - but perhaps the young man hadn't wanted to stick around afterwards. She's ten days behind on the family gossip, and obviously nobody is going to start filling her in with the family sitting right here. Patrick could have while they were cooling their heels at the dock but Patrick is useless.

"Did you have a nice vacation?" Michael asks her. Michael is the youngest of the hired staff and knows nothing about ESF, so as far as Michael is concerned Ivy has been having a nice time hiking or sipping hot chocolate in cafes or whatever it is normal people do on vacation. Ivy wouldn't know except for having researched it.

"It was refreshing," she says.

"Good chocolate?"

"I brought some back for everyone," Ivy says. She'd had just enough time in the airport to grab souvenirs, figuring they'd be a good distraction if anyone wondered why she hadn't taken any pictures. The promise of chocolate meets universal approval, even though it's probably lower quality chocolate than what Mrs. Vanders stocks in the staff cupboards, and certainly lower quality than what the family eats.

She had thought about bringing back something special for Jane, but she couldn't see Jane wanting a cuckoo clock or a snow globe or any of the other airport tchotchkes. Now she wishes she had, though, just to show Jane she was thinking of her particularly.

"So, Jane, should we finish that chess game?" Ravi asks.

Jane looks over at Ivy, who gestures to her still mostly-full plate.

"Find me later?" Jane says apologetically. Kiran has a brief eyeball conversation with Patrick and follows them. Shoulders relax around the table once the twins and Jane are clear of the kitchen.

"So, welcome home," Cook says, tapping his left collarbone, which is ESF code for "a rival operative is pursuing your objective". Ivy isn't sure whether he's teasing her, or genuinely trying to give her a heads-up, or what. ESF code is not complicated enough to say "please don't talk about Jane like she's some kind of passive target", so she just scratches her right temple to acknowledge.

*

Ivy does mean to go find Jane, but by the time she's finished dinner, and retrieved and handed out the chocolate, and debriefed with Mrs. Vanders while loading the dishwasher and cleaning the kitchen, she's yawning constantly. And Mrs. Vanders has her coming on at 5:30, on the logic that if she's still halfway on Geneva time, she'll be up then anyways. When Ivy takes a quick look in the winter garden, and nobody is there, she gives up and heads for bed, leaving the rest of the chocolate and a "see you tomorrow!" note on the table outside Jane's room.

Nobody is up at 5:30, and Cook reports that nobody needed anything during the night. He's relieved to see her - he's been working split shifts since the gala, apparently, and it's catching up with him. Ivy winces sympathetically. Irregular hours are normal for the legacy staff even without ESF complications, but usually she and Patrick and Mr. Vanders all split up the overnights.

Ivy sets up for staff breakfast and checks the task list for prep work for family breakfast. There isn't much - Kiran and Ravi mostly live on coffee in the morning, and Jane just needs fruit and yogurt put out in the breakfast nook around 8. Anita used to like more elaborate hot breakfasts, but her chef had moved back to London years ago, and Anita's internal sense of mealtimes is so askew now from everyone else's that there's no point in trying to anticipate. Whoever is in the kitchen will just have to do their best if she appears and asks for something. Ivy is not a great cook but Anita has a good sense of humor, which goes a long way.

With nothing left to do, Ivy looks up Jane's entry in the big kitchen binder of notes about guests, and learns that she has no food allergies or dietary restrictions but doesn't like cilantro. This is a boring note compared with the infamous guests who only eat fried foods if they're cooked in duck fat or subsist entirely on avocado-papaya smoothies. Ivy isn't surprised - Jane seems too practical to be picky like that, and also, in Ivy's best guess, too poor. (Ivy used to do all the background checks for people visiting the island but Mrs. Vanders had reassigned them to Cook in anticipation of Ivy's ESF retirement. It means that she gets to find out things about Jane by actually getting to know her, so she's glad.) 

Staff breakfast happens - Melissa is chatty in the morning, and Catalina got a message from her deployed husband, and everyone is glad to hear he's doing well. Ivy agrees to help Jorge deadhead the early tulips, which are starting to look messy. Chanthavy is planning to clean the shark tank and needs a spotter and also wants to coordinate with Michael to make sure the pool deck gets cleaned promptly after she gets out. Normal island business. With one thing and another, Ivy doesn't see Jane until after lunch, when she's sent to clear dishes from the winter garden, where lunch had apparently been eaten. Nobody is in the winter garden, but when Ivy is coming back through the ballroom with the dishes, Ravi shouts to her from the billiard room.

"Ivy," Ravi says. "You're just what we need, c'mere."

"I have to go to the kitchen," Ivy calls back, because apparently he can see her but not her tray. She hurries back and finds Ravi and Jane standing by the Stickley pool table with pool cues and a game in progress. Jane looks disgruntled.

"Jane finds my advice suspect because I'm the one playing against her," Ravi says. "If you advise her, she won't need to wonder if I set her up to fail."

"I'm sorry I said that," Jane mutters. "I was frustrated."

"We all find Ravi exasperating," Ivy says, and is rewarded with a Jane smile.

This is the exact sort of situation that sometimes makes things weird between the legacy staff and the hired staff - Ravi isn't going to summon Catalina out of the laundry room to frolic with the guests - but Ivy's grown up with it, ever since she started drawing a salary when she was 14. 

"Okay," she says. "What's the situation."

"Oh, we should start over to be fair," Ravi says, starting to re-rack the balls. "And we need some kind of stakes. For incentive."

"Um," Jane says, standing there in his mansion on his private island. Ravi rolls his eyes.

"Not money, obviously," he says. "I know, Ivy didn't bring _me_ any Swiss chocolate, you can stake some of that."

Jane frowns.

"If you win I'll ask Vanny to make lava cakes," Ravi says. Jane looks unimpressed - perhaps it's occurred to her like it has to Ivy that he's gambling someone else's labor - but the lava cakes are good, and Mrs. Vanders does, in fact, get paid to cater to exactly this sort of request, so Ivy catches Jane's eye and nods.

"All right," Jane says. "One piece of chocolate."

"Mind if I break?" Ravi asks. Ivy is immediately suspicious when he bends down to shoot as to what, exactly, game they are actually playing here. His stance is correct, but the way he takes his time about it seems like an invitation to Jane to admire the angles of the various body parts involved. He wouldn't have asked Ivy to join them just so she could watch him flirt with Jane, though, would he?

Nothing pockets on the break, but Jane is set up for a pretty easy shot on the 10, a ball that happens to match her electric-blue-and-white zebra print shirt.

"Are we calling shots?" Ivy asks.

"I am," Ravi says grandly, "But Jane may be the beneficiary of chance."

"Ah, Fortuna," Jane says. She clearly agrees with Ivy about the 10. Ivy watches her set up. She's close, but it bounces off the edge of the cushion. "Drat."

"4 in the side," Ravi says, and sinks it. "2 in the corner." Another pocket. "1 in the corner," a fancy shot that hits another ball and goes astray.

"11 in the side," Jane says, although she doesn't have to, and scratches the cue ball. Jane plays pool, Ivy concludes, exactly like someone who played a few times in college and thinks it's kind of neat. Ivy and Ravi play pool like people who grew up on a tiny island with no video games.

"Can I give you some advice?" Ivy says, after Ravi botches another overly-complicated shot. Ivy is 90% sure he did it on purpose.

"That was the plan," Jane says. She's eyeing an awkward shot on the 14.

"Try the 12," Ivy says, "From over here," because she sees Jane's dubious face. Jane comes around the table.

"Okay," Ivy says. "Is it okay if I adjust you a little?"

Jane looks up, amused. "I don't mind," she says. It's a little pointed and Ivy would very much like to know whether Ravi has already tried to pull this move and how Jane reacted. Ivy is genuinely interested in improving Jane's shot, the chance to touch her is just a side benefit, but that's probably exactly how Ravi would feel about it too. Jane lets Ivy move her elbow, gently nudge her hips, and realign her head.

"Think smooth," Ivy says, swinging Jane's arm a little. Her blouse is silky and Ivy would totally draw this out if Ravi wasn't standing there smirking at them. Ivy backs away regretfully.

"Try now," she says, and Jane sinks the 12 in the corner just like Ivy showed her.

"The 11?" Jane asks. It's plausible. Ivy bends over with her and gives her some tips about sight lines and aiming off-center. Another pocket. She tries for the 14, a longer shot down the table, and scratches.

Ravi sinks the 5 and the 7, the 7 with a showy and completely unnecessary shot behind his back, and then misses with the 1 again.

"I'm being hustled," Jane complains, but lets Ivy set her up to sink the vexing 14 and the 9.

Ravi is definitely playing somebody. Ivy can't figure out exactly what his angle is here. She's seen him play to humiliate, which this definitely isn't, and play to seduce, which this also doesn't seem like. Maybe he really does just want to see Jane's pool game improve; he's always loved excellence and been easily pained by seeing people struggle.

Jane pockets the 10 but unfortunately also the cue ball, and Ravi runs the rest of the table, finishing up with a shot that glides the 8-ball within a hair of the 15 before sinking it.

"Aw, my Ivy chocolate," Jane says.

"I'll tell you what," Ravi says. "I'll give you a chance to win it back - "

"Hustling!" Jane interrupts.

"And Ivy can be your champion," Ravi says. "What do you think, Ivy, rematch for the honor of the chocolate?"

Ivy raises her eyebrows at him. If he's trying to show off for Jane, she isn't going to make it easy for him.

"You're on," she says.

Ravi racks and Ivy breaks, making the 9 in the corner. 

"Ooh," Jane says.

"11 in the side," Ivy calls, easy, and just starts picking them off, not thinking about Jane watching, not getting fancy unless she has to, until she's left with one ball and a terrible position between solids. That goes about as well as it's going to, and she watches Ravi pocket six before slightly mis-angling a bank shot. Ivy sinks her last ball with a perfect stop shot and pockets the 8-ball into the opposite corner.

"How about that," Ivy says, remembering their audience. She turns and sees Jane sitting in an armchair in the corner studying a pool cue with a look of concentration.

"Jane, you missed Ivy winning," Ravi says.

"Oh!" Jane says, looking up. "You were both so much better than me I guess I stopped following. I started thinking about an umbrella with a pool cue handle and rod. I could put green baize on the inside, and maybe a miniature ball on the runner. Brown watered silk on the canopy outside."

"Three thousand," Ravi says promptly.

"It doesn't even exist!" Jane says. "I'm going to go work on one that does, though."

"Hmpf," Ravi says, left standing there holding a pool cue. "The worst part is I still want lava cakes. Do you think I'm honor-bound _not_ to ask for them now?"

"I think you have to search your heart for that answer," Ivy says, and goes to find out what else needs doing before dinner.

*

Dinner ends up completely dominated by Jane having an animated conversation with Chanthavy about shark tanks, dive safety, aquarium design, and birth control for fish. Apparently Jane had crossed paths with Chanthavy and been fascinated and alarmed to learn she routinely got in the tank with the bull shark. Ivy, listening, has to admit to herself that she has sort of taken the fish tanks for granted the way she's gotten used to the rest of Charlotte's remodeling, and has not really been thinking about the way the living fish require even more sustained, ongoing caretaking than the nasturtiums in the courtyard. She wonders if Octavian will keep the fish tanks even if Charlotte never comes back. It's not like he's going to be bothered about a spare aquarist on his payroll, although Cook and Patrick have been begging Mrs. Vanders for years to hire a new full-time chef on the same logic and nothing ever comes of that. Mrs. Vanders has always insisted it's a choice for Charlotte, though, some kind of old fashioned "woman of the house" thing, so maybe if Charlotte doesn't come back Patrick can talk Kiran into pushing for it. Dinner ends with Chanthavy inviting Jane to come look at her aquarium designs. Jane accepts, and Kiran whispers something to Ravi about etchings.

Ivy flushes a little. Was Chanthavy's invitation _that_ kind of invitation? Chanthavy is in her mid-twenties and doesn't talk about herself too much; all that Ivy really knows about her social life is that she doesn't mind restricting it to alternate weekends in the West Village apartment the Thrashes make available to the island staff for mainland trips. She isn't in personal service professionally the way most of the hired staff are - Charlotte had headhunted her from an aquarium service company - so she might not feel the same sort of pressure to not interact with the family and guests.

If Ivy had been a little faster on the ball, she could have invited Jane to play Scrabble, except she would have died of embarrassment saying that in front of her brother and Mr. and Mrs. Vanders and Melissa and Jorge (who are about the ages her parents would be now), and knowing they were all assuming it was a euphemism. Alas.

*

The next morning Ivy is determined to get a chance to talk with Jane, and as soon as she's done cleaning up from breakfast she skives off from Catalina's intentions towards the east wing curtains and goes looking for her. She eventually finds her in the bowling alley, where Ravi and Kiran are arguing and Jane is looking patient.

"Ivy!" Ravi says. "Perfect."

"Yes, Ravi?" Ivy says, waiting for it.

"We find ourselves with a problem of numbers," Ravi says. "If Kiran and I share a lane, we'll bicker and annoy Jane, but if Jane shares a lane she's liable to wander off when it's not her turn and start designing bowling-pin-handled umbrellas."

"That was once," Jane mutters.

"But!" Ravi goes on. "If you and I share a lane and Jane and Kiran share a lane, you can talk to Jane while Kiran and I bowl, and no umbrellas will be born today."

Jane looks shifty; Ivy suspects that acts of umbrella have already have been committed.

"I'll tell you what," Ravi offers. "Help me beat Kiran and I'll abduct her to have lunch with our mother and you can have Jane all to yourself."

"I don't think so," Kiran says, and flings her ball down the alley into a strike. Ivy thinks she's rejecting the lunch, but the gloating look she turns on Ravi suggests that she might instead be rejecting the idea that he can beat her.

Ivy, to be honest, has never been much for bowling. Even before Charlotte, it had been Octavian's thing, with his children. Ivy has never quite felt like she belonged in the bowling alley, and she's only gotten more uneasy there since Kiran had told her about Charlotte's theory that the bowling alley was the vagina of the house. Ivy has no objection to vaginas, and it's nonsense anyways, but she can't quite shake the idea that she shouldn't just assume she's welcome in this private territory.

Ravi makes his throw, for seven pins, and Jane gets five while he's waiting for his ball to come back. His second throw gets him a spare. Jane manages to knock down one more, and then Ivy steps up and promptly rolls a gutter ball. Her second throw is a little better - three pins - but Ravi flaps the scorecard at her accusingly.

It goes on more or less like that - Kiran demolishes frame after frame, Ravi hits more than he misses, Jane is keeping up valiantly, and Ivy is an embarrassment to the cause. Even her elite secret agent training isn't helping her at all, and it's too intermittently loud to attempt any kind of real conversation with Jane, either. The only consolation in the whole affair is getting to watch Jane bowl - she's wearing purple jeans and a black and white polka-dotted sweater, and they're really nicely fitting jeans.

At the end of the game, Kiran and Jane are over a hundred points ahead of Ravi and Ivy, and it only isn't worse because Ravi got a double strike in the ninth and tenth frames. Ivy's high point was a spare in the sixth.

"Did you know three strikes in a row are called a turkey?" Ivy tells Jane, trying to be a good sport. "And then it goes goose, chicken, turducken, penguin, flamingo, turkey vulture." Ivy is better at words than at bowling.

"A turducken is a very different sort of thing than the rest of those," Jane starts, laughing, which sounds like the beginning of a beautiful argument, but then Kiran declares that as the winner she gets to bring Jane _with_ them to have lunch with their mother. 

"Aha!" Ravi says. "I knew I threw that game for a reason."

"You did _not_ ," Kiran says, outraged, and they bicker off towards the courtyard, Jane trailing along with a look of amusement. Apparently Jane has forgiven Anita for her interdimensional trip, at least enough to have lunch with her. For all Ivy knows Jane has even gone back through the portal again. Ivy has never been tempted: she wants to see what it's like to live off the island, but somewhere really _different_ , not some weird mirror image. But maybe for Jane, alternate dimensions are just one more little step past the big step from her old life to Tu Reviens. Ivy wants to know, and she wants Jane to want to tell her; she wants Jane's attention the way Jane has Ivy's, like she's an unprecedented thing in her life.

*

Ivy has no idea what she expects during dinner - Jane to be sympathizing with Catalina about her husband's deployments? Ravi to invite Jane to go see the Georgia O'Keeffe in the Gold Suite? _Frog Mouth_ is a minor O'Keeffe - O'Keeffe herself apparently hated it and said she was never painting another frog - plus it's basically the only modernist work in the house, and Ravi's never cared for it despite his appetite for carnality. But it would fit in thematically with a morning spent in the bowling alley.

Nothing like that happens, though. The only event of note is that Kiran and Ravi are both late and Mrs. Vanders takes advantage of the opportunity to dress Ivy down in front of the hired staff for not helping Catalina with the curtains. Jane comes in on the end of it and looks mortified for Ivy. Ivy is long since used to it, and intends to explain as much to Jane after dinner, but Jane slips away while Ivy is still cleaning up and doesn't answer her door when Ivy knocks. Maybe she's with Ravi. Who even knows.

Ivy realizes she's tense and probably snappish, and decides to go burn it off in the pool.

The pool is right next to the bowling alley but, in contrast, Ivy has always felt at home there. She's always wanted to _be_ there. Her parents hadn't liked her swimming alone, but she's done hours and hours of it anyways, in teenage rebellion, in grief, in nerves over her first real mission, in determination when she decided to quit ESF. Ivy showers off in the changing room, walks down to the deep end, and dives from the edge, a nice clean start. A few slow laps to warm up, and then up to her regular pace, a steady speed she can maintain for the rest of her mile.

She's about halfway there when something splashes in the water in front of her, and she looks forward to see someone's hairy legs standing on the stairs.

She stands up - water up to her shoulders - and sees Ravi standing on the stairs waving at her, and Jane standing behind him on the deck of the pool. Ravi is wearing a bottle-green European-style suit that doesn't leave nearly enough to the imagination. Jane is wearing a fluffy Tu Reviens-monogrammed bathrobe, and her hair looks like it's already wet.

"Ivy!" Ravi says. "I convinced Jane we needed an evening swim. Fancy meeting you here." He's smiling, but Ivy can only assume his plans did not include an unexpected third party. Jane... Jane does not look the least bit sorry to see her, staring down at her with big dark eyes. 

"Hi," Jane says, a little shyly, and turns around to hang up her bathrobe on the hooks by the ever-present racks of towels.

Ivy isn't sure what kind of bathing suit she would have pictured Jane owning. Plaid? Striped like a lionfish? White and orange like Nemo? Jane's swimsuit is a sleek shiny steel grey, a simple tank design like a competition suit, and Ivy is floored. If she wasn't already standing she'd be flailing and sputtering. Possibly if she wasn't neck-deep in the water she would actually be on fire.

"So, Ivy-bean," Ravi says. "Want to race?" He kicks forward from the stairs, shooting past her.

Ivy thinks of herself as more of an endurance swimmer than a sprinter - she swam around the island when she was 16, to prove she could do it, far enough out to be safe from the rocks, with Patrick and Ravi following in a runabout - and she's starting from a standstill vs Ravi's kickoff. But no way is she giving up just because he's cheating. She's already kicked off into her fastest freestyle - balling up into her flip turn - dolphin kicking away from the wall - up into a final few meters of butterfly, and... she's got both hands on the wall.

"Ivy!" Jane yells. "Ivy wins it by... at least one Ivy length!"

Ivy looks over and Ravi is only just now touching the wall.

"Technically," he pants, "I never said it was there and back."

"Do you want to keep going?" Ivy asks.

"Nooo," Ravi says. "I meant that I might have been first to the other end. But I will concede in the interest of you not asking for a do-over."

"Fair," Ivy says. She looks up at Jane. "You coming in?"

Jane walks down to the deep end, climbs up onto the diving board, and does a smooth forward dive.

"I have to ask," she says when she surfaces. "The mosaic isn't original, is it?"

Ivy looks down to the bottom of the pool, which is tiled with an intricate Islamic-style geometric pattern.

"You mean like some priceless 15th century wall, now hanging out in the chlorine?" Ravi says, to Jane's increasingly horrified expression. "No. Contemporary artist, pool-safe materials." Jane sighs in relief.

"I wouldn't mind swimming a few laps," she says to Ivy. "If you wanted to finish your set."

"Sure," Ivy says, and then just watches Jane start her lap; she's clearly not as powerful a swimmer as Ivy, but she has a nice efficient stroke.

"Okay," Ravi says, "If you guys are going to be boring, I'm going to leave you to it. Say goodnight to Jane for me." And then he's getting up and leaving. Ivy is perplexed, and kind of offended on Jane's behalf - like, what, this isn't the intimate dip he was picturing, so he's just going to bail on her? But Jane is at the other hand, swimming along blithely, and so Ivy figures she might as well swim as long as Jane does, which turns out to be just long enough for Ivy to finish her mile, going a little faster than she would otherwise.

"Ravi left?" Jane says, when they're both back on the stairs, sitting and letting their legs float up. She doesn't sound upset, or surprised.

"Yeah, awhile ago," Ivy says.

Jane grins. "Does he always wingman you like this, or should I feel special?"

"You should definitely feel special," Ivy volleys, without really thinking about it, and then what Jane said sinks in. Is that what Ravi's been doing? Trying to _help_? This whole time?

"I thought he was flirting with you," Ivy says, honestly, and Jane smiles.

"Not since I told him I was interested in _you_ ," she says. "Unless that's how Ravi flirts - 'hey Jane, I'm going to get Ivy to come play', 'hey Jane, I think Ivy's in the pool'."

Ivy laughs. Jane's Ravi voice is pretty good. "Not that I've ever heard." She scoots over on the stairs a little closer to Jane. Jane's normally energetic hair has been somewhat subdued by the water; little trickles are dripping down Jane's neck. Ivy can see her entire tattoo. She wants to touch it again. She wants to touch Jane, and ask her a million questions - has she been to any more alternate dimensions, how is she doing with the whole aunt-was-a-spy thing, would she ever consider applying to colleges with Ivy, how many umbrellas _did_ she make while Ivy was in Geneva - but more than anything, right this second, Ivy wants to kiss her, and the way Jane is biting her lip makes Ivy think Jane might want that too.

She scoots a little closer, leaning in to kiss Jane. Their lips barely brush before Jane moves back.

"I would really like to kiss you," Jane says. "Maybe... a lot? But I'm not sure I can stop worrying that Ravi is going to come back, or that Mrs. Vanders is going to come in here and start yelling at you again, or... something." She makes a face, adorably. "We could try out my hot tub? We're already dressed for it. And I really need to rinse my hair soon."

The mix of shy and eager might actually kill Ivy. It's good thinking, too - Ivy has no idea what areas of the house Kiran-and-Patrick have decided are appropriate for Kiran-and-Patricking, but the last thing she needs is Mrs. Vanders asking her why she can't be as discreet as Patrick.

They tiptoe through the house, trying not to make each other laugh - Jane wrapped back up in her bathrobe and Ivy with a towel around her hips - and run down the east wing hall to Jane's suite, where the hot tub is already hot. Jane shrugs off the bathrobe but leaves her swimsuit on, so Ivy follows her lead. Jane climbs in and sinks all the way down under the water, patting her hair with her hands to make sure it's all submerged and soaked. Ivy waits until she's seated, then climbs in herself; the hot tub is small enough that their knees bump in the center.

"Mrs. Vanders seemed really mad at you earlier," Jane says. "Is she still upset about you leaving ESF?"

Ivy sighs. "Partly," she says. "I think she always hoped I would be the next Mrs. Vanders - literally, actually, I think she had hopes about me and Corcoran. Cook," she clarifies.

"Isn't he a lot older than you?" Jane asks.

"Nine years," Ivy shrugs. "Almost exactly how much older Mr. Vanders is than Mrs. Vanders. It was never going to happen for a lot of reasons." Jane is listening attentively, her eyes on Ivy's. "I don't understand Patrick and Kiran, really. We grew up in this fishbowl, I don't get feeling like that for the other fish." She takes a breath. "Except maybe a new fish."

"Yeah?" Jane says. She looks down. There's a diamond of water caught in her eyelashes. "Just because they're new?" It could be an insecure question, but the way Jane is smiling to herself, it feels like more of an invitation.

"A dazzling fish," Ivy says, a good Scrabble word. She slides to her knees in the center of the hot tub, and leans up to kiss Jane.

Jane's mouth is hot even in the steamy air, and the way her hands grab on to Ivy's shoulders is gratifying. Ivy braces her hands on the bench on either side of Jane, and Jane's thighs press against her wrists. Jane is exploring her mouth, investigating her lower lip, her upper lip, the way their tongues can slide together.

"Come _up_ here," Jane says, breaking the kiss, and Ivy realizes Jane's hands have been tugging on her shoulders. Jane scoots forward on the bench and it's easy in the water for Ivy to lift herself onto Jane's lap. Jane's hands slip down the back of Ivy's swimsuit to the small of her back, pressing her forward against Jane, body to body. Ivy kisses her again, deeper, hungry. Jane's hands move down to Ivy's hips, to the tops of her thighs. Ivy's hands are on Jane's arms, one hand right over the jellyfish tattoo.

"That was an eight letter word, wasn't it," Jane says, leaning back a little. She puts one of her hands on Ivy's stomach, tentatively, and Ivy puts her hand over it and moves it up to her breast, slowly enough that Jane could pull away, but Jane's intent look of concentration is the opposite of reluctant. Ivy's swimsuit is lined, but not padded; she's acutely aware that there are just two thin layers of material between her and Jane's hand. Her chest is rising and falling like she's been swimming more laps. Jane strokes her thumb across Ivy's breast, finding her nipple and making Ivy squirm. Ivy puts her face in her hair, nuzzling the curve of her ear.

"Nuzzling," Ivy says.

"Nice," Jane says, breathily. Her other hand has found Ivy's other breast. "Um, squeezing? No, shit. Squeezed?"

Ivy's hands are on Jane's ribs, her fingertips just grazing the fascinating skin at the edge of the armhole of her swimsuit. She tries to picture her word list. "Buzzkill" and "gazpacho" are all wrong.

"Uh, fizziest?" she tries. There are a lot of good words with z, and it makes sense for how she's feeling, like she's bubbling more than the hot tub jets.

"Definitely," Jane says. She kisses Ivy again, and moves one of Ivy's hands to her chest like Ivy had done. Ivy can feel the pebble of Jane's nipple through her swimsuit. She can hear Jane's breath catch.

"Dizzying," Ivy says, and slants her head back into the kiss. Jane's hands are on Ivy's waist again, and Ivy realizes she's grinding down into Jane's lap, chasing the pressure of Jane's body up against her.

"Yeah," Jane says, into Ivy's mouth. Ivy pulls back to look at her; her eyes are huge and she looks a little overwhelmed. Ivy makes herself slow down, and Jane's hands tighten on her waist.

"You okay?" Ivy checks. Jane hides her head in Ivy's neck.

"You're so gorgeous and this is amazing," she mumbles, or something like that, muffled against Ivy's skin. "Please don't stop? I'm trying to think of an eight letter suggestion and all I can come up with is fellatio and it doesn't seem applicable."

Ivy laughs, which makes Jane start laughing too, shaking in the water against Ivy. "Jacuzzis is," Ivy says. "Um. Unzipped, but also not applicable right now."

"If it was?" Jane murmurs. She's tugging on the strap of Ivy's swimsuit, but Ivy's suit is more like the kind that will stay put through a hundred meters of butterfly than the kind that will helpfully melt away when a pretty girl wants to take it off. Jane's looks much the same. "I don't want to get out yet," Ivy says, and Jane's hands pull her in close.

"Definitely not," Jane says. Ivy goes back to kissing her, slow open mouthed kisses that speed up quickly, one fingernail tracing around Jane's nipple through her swimsuit. Jane's breasts are down under the water but Ivy's are just out of it, both of Jane's hands out of the water too now. Ivy presses down, trying to get all of both of them in the same place. Jane shifts even deeper into the water, her head thrown back on the edge of the hot tub, Ivy's mouth on her neck. She's started to make little noises encouraging Ivy, and her hips are rocking up against her.

"I want," Jane says, and doesn't manage to finish the sentence. Ivy pulls back enough to look at her, and Jane lifts her head. "You're so gorgeous," Jane says again. She's chewing on her lip, and the pressure of her body against Ivy's is maddening, too blunt and not quite enough. "Can I..."

"Please do," Ivy says, not entirely sure what Jane is asking, but pretty sure she's up for it. Jane moves one hand down under the water, touching Ivy right where she straddles Jane. Jane's eyes are on her own hand and Ivy looks down too, watching Jane try pressing with her fingertips, her knuckles, her thumb. Ivy knows she'd be soaked through her swimsuit if they weren't in the water. "I'm so - " she says. She can hardly find any word for how good Jane's fingers feel, let alone an eight-letter one, but she wants Jane to know what this is doing to her. "Please," she says again. "Please, Janie."

"Here?" Jane asks. Ivy wants to put her hand over Jane's and move her slightly but she also wants to be the perfect canvas for Jane's exploration. Jane presses harder and Ivy bucks against her.

"So close," Ivy squeaks. Jane's other hand moves down between them too, fingers curling curiously under the elastic of Ivy's suit, and Ivy grinds down against Jane's fingers and comes, just like that.

"Oh, wow," Jane is saying, when Ivy opens her eyes. Jane is sunk in the water to her chin and she looks dazed and enthralled. "Oh, wow, Ivy." Her fingertips are still under Ivy's suit, almost inside her. Ivy pulls Jane's hands out of the way gently and leans forward to kiss her, water lapping at their mouths.

"Do you want me to - " Ivy says, an inch from her mouth, and Jane sits up a little, shaking water out of her ears.

"Um," Jane says. She shifts her hands, so that they're holding Ivy's. "I really wanted to do that," she says. "But I've never - ugh, I guess it's dumb to be shy _now_."

"Hey, no," Ivy says. "I mean, um, 'optional' doesn't score as high as 'kumquats', but you're a lot more likely to have the letters." She isn't entirely sure that came out right or the metaphor makes sense, but Jane looks less embarrassed, which was the point. "I'm at your service," she adds.

Jane sits all the way up, looking concerned.

"Not in a work way!" Ivy says quickly. "You are purely a personal project. I just mean you're terrific, and no pressure."

"I would sometime," Jane says deliberately. "Um, ongoing?" She frowns. "That's just seven. Oh, but 'romantic' is eight!"

Ivy grins. She's still in Jane's lap, and it's so nice, just feeling the slip of skin against skin in the water. "I'll get you there," she promises, a little recklessly. "We can practice. It's a small island, I think you've tried most of the main forms of recreation now... pool, bowling..."

"We still haven't actually played Scrabble," Jane says. "And as far as I can tell the main recreations here are visiting alternate dimensions, international espionage, and art collecting."

"Okay, my home is weird," Ivy admits. She traces one of the strands of Jane's jellyfish tattoo lazily. "I can't imagine if I had met you in the normal world and then I had to bring you back here, like at least this way you know what you're getting into."

"I don't know," Jane says. "We would have had to meet somewhere an umbrella maker could meet an ex-spy, it couldn't have been that normal."

Ivy tries to picture that - meeting Jane in one of those cafes she hadn't gone to in Geneva, maybe. Magnolia introducing Ivy to Jane as the child of friends of hers. Meeting at college, if Ivy had quit ESF earlier, or Jane had kept going. It feels like they would have had to meet somehow, like ending up here with Jane at Tu Reviens was inevitable, although maybe that's just the gravitational pull of the hot tub and Jane's magnetic skin.

Jane nudges her a little, and Ivy realizes that she's lost in thought.

"Oh my god," she realizes.

"What?" Jane says, clearly braced for art thieves or spy problems or something like that.

"I'm going to be totally useless tomorrow," Ivy says. "It's just going to be the Jane channel up here, constantly." She's at risk of being as distracted as Patrick, and she can't even be sorry about it.

Jane splashes her a little. "That would be two of us. I will try very hard not to make an Ivy umbrella." She thinks about it. "I will try very hard to make my Ivy umbrella PG rated."

"I can't wait to see it," Ivy says, and Jane smiles.


End file.
